I was doing important things on the internet last night in 2001 and came across this:

The ribbed turtleneck. Do you remember ribbed turtlenecks?

I clicked pause on the second season episode of Mad Men I was watching for the fourth time (my life is depressing) and got lost in the ribbed turtleneck. For a moment, my research took me down the k-hole that is Steve from Blue’s Clues life story/then-and-now pictures, but I righted myself and got back to business.

If you were a jacked dude with bicep tattoos and Lou Pearlman PTSD, you wore ribbed turtlenecks. You wore them in pools and on album covers and to TRL and with a scarf in the wintertime. You knew that a ribbed turtleneck would curve your torso sexually, while leaving the clavicle to the imagination of a young Megan, caught in the rosaried web of a single-sexed Catholic school education. You wore a ribbed turtleneck because it demanded more respect than, say, movement denim…

…or whatever is happening here:

Other than on Steve Jobs (iRIP), I haven’t really seen a good turtleneck in a while. This is important. I think this means that we, as human Americans, have evolved past the post-Clinton/early Bush belly button piercing, and are now settled in a sort of locally-sourced whiskey hangover/so let’s get vegan brunch skinny jean. We’re more serious now, guys.

Here are a few more turtleneck shots for your enjoyment. It’s important to look back and remember what things and times were like. And to be grateful that corn rows on white people are now strictly reserved for sunburned tweens vacationing in Atlantis.